wednesday morning we packed up the suburban and headed down the 5 for thanksgiving at my grandmother’s house with my entire extended family in san diego.

i too, wish that I had a video of the past three days because no combination of words and/or pictures could describe the occasion.

i can’t really compete with my journalist of a roommate’s writing skills so i’ll just stick to what I do best: lists…here’s my top 8, bottom 4 for the past three days

top 8:

1. spending 11+ hours in the car and sitting in stand still traffic for at least 3 of those hours. top 8? oh yes. there are a few things i love about family road trips.

a) you can always count on my dad to be a moderately reckless driver

b) my mom will always get upset with dad about said driving.

c) dad will start to feel bad about scaring mom, so when she wants to stop at starbucks at least once every two hours, he will comply to her wishes.

d) i get to watch them bicker while i chuckle and enjoy endless supplies of chai tea. on top of that, my backseat company included cassidy, phillip, and my cousin adam. adam is studying chinese at berkeley (how appropriate), so we all learned basic chinese conversational skills.

2. seeing andrew for the first time since august! also, hearing my grandmother call andrew the caveman from the geico commercials.

3. grandma and aunt merely’s pins that say “obama’s girl” in curlz mt font. there are many pins in different colors for different outfits.

4. grandma’s list of things we are not allowed to discuss while in her house. some of the topics include politics, economics, religion, health issues (mental and/or physical), parenting advice and/or delimas, etc. essentially, our topics of discussion were limited to weather and pets.

5. making pumpkin cobbler (so much better than pumpkin pie. come over sometime and i’ll make it for you)

6. everyone interpretting the list (see #4) as a guideline for topics to discuss over dinner. (also see #1 on bottom 4)

7. taking lots of walks.

8. eating at ihop (tutti fruity pancake breakfast or mountain mamma chocolate fountain breakfast special?) friday morning with uncle mike and aunt caryl (unrelated family/friends from dallas) who were also in the area for the holidays. they are the kind of people who just light up a room. we are blessed to know them.

bottom 4.

1. everyone intrepretting the list (see #4 & 6) as a guideline for topics to discuss over dinner. and in this context “loudly voice your opinion while everyone else around you does the same” might be slightly more appropriate than the word “discuss.”

2. grandma getting very upset that no one respected her wishes, and retreating to her bedroom for the rest of the night/all of friday.

3. family unheaval over grandma’s low spirits.

4. almost getting in a car wreck, running off the road into a mud pile, and getting stuck until a good samaritan in a white pickup came to pull us out of the mud. (top 8/9 list: watching my dad look through the mud for the next 30 minutes for his missing shoe that somehow fell out of the car during the experience. hm…)

I am very thankful for holiday breaks, aunt merely’s flaming red hair, and that we are finally only a car ride away from my mom’s entire extended family. I am also very thankful that every morning i get to wake up in a frigid bedroom inside 524 wrights mill road , walk outside past our slightly unbalanced wooden swing, and spend every day with my auburn family.

Coif? It’s called a bonnet, people. Today I found some really great pictures of 3rd grade Holly succeeding in being a pilgrim and I wish I had a way of getting them on my computer so that we could all be thankful together that I grew adult teeth and got thicker hair. To the good fortune of my potential self-embarrassment, I don’t have a scanner so you will have to use your imaginations.

On an entirely different note, why do my family holidays feel like an episode of The Office? I wish I had pictures. No. Videos. One video of the entire night.

It all seems fine and normal until we start watching youtube videos that get progressively more inappropriate. Or until some one makes a racist joke about Obama, making everyone uncomfortable. Even people over the age of 40 laugh when they feel uncomfortable, so everyone laughs knowing that they don’t think its funny. Or until some one lifts up their shirt so as to show us her scar from surgery. You know, I take back that first sentence; nothing about it ever seemed fine or normal, except for Dad and Tina who are totally Jim and Pam.

The whole time, I felt as though I needed to look into the camera for solace from my millions of understanding viewers. But there are none.

The reality: Loving your family is hard, which is why college is so great. You get to pick your family! I’m thankful for that, and for my real family, that I actually do love.

It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better that it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

As we’ve gone from 89 degrees on August 7 in Huntsville to 34 degrees in Auburn, I offer a most sincere apology for being so absent for this change. I have a bad habit of not doing the things I love most when I get busy; writing is one of them. I recently made a declaration that the 3 things removed from our days when we are busiest are the 3 most important: breakfast, exercise and time with Jesus. I’m adding writing to that list. This has been my thought process for the past month every time I have considered sitting down with the 2 great p’s of our time (pen and paper, of course):

Self, you don’t have time or mental energy to process your thoughts and in order to write, your thoughts must be processed. Therefore, you should watch Dawson’s Creek instead because then you don’t have to think about anything and you can feel unguilty about watching hours of t.v. because, I mean, Dawson Leery is SO deep and he expands your vocabulary, which is very, very important to you as an aspiring journalist.

The result of this kind of idleness is a life half lived, and, as I promised my kitchen last night, I will live it no more. Anyone who has discovered a creative outlet knows that whatever it may be [art, music, writing, professional wrestling, etc.] helps them experience life in more acute ways. For me, that is writing. When I don’t do it, I am not experiencing life the way I am supposed to.

And so I will follow of the advice of the great French poet Charles Baudelaire who commands that I “always be a poet, even in prose,” because not being a poet means not obeying the greater command to have life in the full.

Long story short, I’m back. What are the 8 best things that have happened to me in the past few months, you ask?

1. Moving into the greatest house in the western hemisphere with the 3 greatest girls in the western hemisphere. Pictures to ensue.